Agenda item

The Service Manager, Adoption Tees Valley, will be in attendance to provide further information in relation to sufficiency and permanency from an adoption perspective.

V Davidson-Boyd, Service Manager from Adoption Tees Valley, was in attendance at the meeting to provide the Panel with an overview of the Adoption Tees Valley service in the context of sufficiency and permanency, and how it worked with the five Tees Local Authorities, particularly Middlesbrough.

 

It was highlighted that Adoption Tees Valley’s Bi-annual Report had been circulated to Panel Members, prior to the meeting, for information as background reading to accompany the agenda. 

 

The Service Manager stated that there had been an improvement in several areas of work within Middlesbrough over the last six months, particularly in terms of permanency planning.

 

By way of background to the service, it was explained that Adoption Tees Valley (ATV) was established in 2018, in line with the Government’s aim to see all local authorities with adoption responsibilities participate in Regional Adoption Agencies (RAAs) by 2020.  The key drivers for this were that children were waiting too long to be adopted and to improve adoption support and outcomes for adopted children. 

 

The RAAs had provided ongoing opportunities for collaborative thinking and working, sharing of ideas and good practice and stimulating focus on adoption at national and regional levels.  The RAAs also provided a larger pool of adoptive families resulting in increased adoptions - previously around 150 local authorities each carrying out a small number of adoptions but now there were currently 40 RAAs carrying out an increased number of adoptions.

 

Adoption Tees Valley was the Regional Adoption Agency (RAA) for the five local authorities within the Tees Valley – Middlesbrough, Stockton, Hartlepool, Darlington and Redcar and Cleveland.  ATV was responsible for:-

 

·        Recruitment, assessment and approval of adoptive families

·        Receiving referrals of children for adoption

·        Family finding

·        Matching and placing children with adoptive families

·        Life story work and books

·        Step-parent adoptions

 

The Panel was provided with detailed information regarding the adoption process – both in terms of the child’s journey and the adopters’ journey.

 

Child’s Journey

 

The process for the referral, matching and placement of children through adoption was as follows:-

 

·        All children in the care of the local authority were assessed to determine the most suitable care plan.

·        Once the permanence plan was known, where the plan was for adoption, it must first be approved by the relevant local authority’s Agency Decision Maker (ADM).

·        It was essential for any child’s plan where adoption may be a possibility to notify ATV at the earliest opportunity in order for preliminary family finding to commence.

·        ATV commenced initial family finding internally by identifying any potentially suitable approved adopters for the child.

·        Where no internally approved adopters existed, ATV commenced the early stages of external family finding.

·        Final proceedings were concluded in Court by seeking the grant of a Placement Order to authorise the local authority to place the child for adoption.

·        Once a Placement Order had been granted this signified the start of the formal family finding process, however, it was beneficial to have undertaken family finding work prior to the Placement Order being grated in order to avoid delays for the child. It was highlighted that this had been an area of challenge and it was essential for the RAA to have sufficient knowledge of the child coming through for adoption.

·        Once a family had been identified that could meet the child’s needs, an Adoption Support Plan was created to support the child and adopters.

·        The proposed match between the child and adopters was presented to an adoption placement Matching Panel, where a recommendation was made for approval or otherwise.

·        Once approved, the child was placed with the adopters following a process of introductions.

·        An Adoption Order was sought and granted by the Court.

 

Recruitment of Adopters

 

A key area of ATV’s work was Recruitment and Marketing.  ATV had a dedicated Recruitment and Marketing Team who continually marketed ATV and recruited potential adopters – providing information and awareness about adoption.  ATV’s role was to assess and prepare potential adopters for approval to ultimately adopt a child/children.

 

This work clearly fell within the remit of ATV as Regional Adoption Agency to:-

 

·        Provide adopter resources for the five local authorities.

·        To receive referrals and notifications of children in order to advise on and provide suitable matches to all the local authority children’s social workers for all of the children they refer through to ATV for adoption.

 

During the course of discussion, the following issues were raised:-

 

·        The Chair asked whether there was any scope for Specialist Adoption Social Workers.  The Service Manager stated that there would be a risk in having specialist adoption Social Workers  within the local authority as there could potentially be a lot of movement for the children to that specialist Worker.  ATV should be, and was, the specialist resource and agency advising the child’s Social Worker within the local authority.  Whilst new operating models should never be ruled out, ATV was the specialist resource with all of its staff coming from the adoption services of the local authorities.  ATV’s practice model was to share, guide, lead and advise the child’s Social Worker so that they understood what they needed to do.  Training had been provided to Social Workers in Middlesbrough and across the Tees Valley to help them understand more about developing the care plan for adoption and the information that must be provided as part of that process.  Child Permanence Report training had been delivered by ATV and this had been complimented in Middlesbrough by further training directed by the Executive Director of Children’s Services.

 

·        A Panel Member queried how birth parents were involved in the adoption process.  The Service Manager stated that birth parents were an incredibly important part in the life of an adopted child and that no child should have an adoption plan if a parent was able to offer a safe placement for them.  Being with family was the best placement for any child and children who came through for adoption were children where parents were unable to make the required changes within specified timescales and where opportunities for change had been exhausted.  ATV had enhanced the work undertaken with birth parents so that where there was a plan for adoption for their child, the birth parents were able to make an active contribution to the plan and to life-story work and were also helped to understand that the role in their child’s life would not disappear.  In terms of post-adoption support, it was highlighted that children who had been adopted had changing identity needs as they grew up and that knowledge of birth parents and family members was important.  In fact, possible contact in the future with birth parents could not be ruled out.  A Voluntary Adoption Agency had been commissioned to provide independent birth parent support in the Tees Valley and this provision was re-tendered for last year in order to provide a more vibrant service, following consultation with birth parents in terms of what the process of engagement with birth parents should look like – including more than one contact from the support service to encourage them to take up the support available.  Having a child adopted was a difficult time for birth parents and could trigger lifestyle issues as a coping mechanism to come to terms with what was happening.  In addition, within the ATV’s Adoption Preparation Training, three individual birth parents volunteered to speak at the group sessions to share their experiences of how their child came to be adopted and this made the adopters shift their understanding and perceptions around birth parents and provided them with empathy towards the birth parents and made them want to commit to the letterbox service as part of the adoption plan.  The current birth parent volunteers had become very important members of the ATV team.

 

·        A Member of the Panel referred to how adoption had changed over the years and that the more recent emergence of television programmes such as long lost family portrayed adopted children tracing and meeting their birth parents and that often the perception was that such cases always had a happy ending.  It was acknowledged that there could be positives and negatives for birth parents and also for adopters and adopted children and that all of these issues should form part of the adoption processes.  It was queried whether it was still the case that contact could only be made if the adopted child sought out their birth parents but not where the birth parents sought out the child.  The Service Manager clarified that this was the case once a child became an adult and that adoption agencies would not routinely promote direct contact if it was not part of the child’s plan.  Letterbox contact arrangements were established at the point of adoption and this was done on an individual basis, depending on what was best for each individual child.  For example, it might be appropriate for a grandparent or the child’s former foster carer to form part of those arrangements and the timings of when the information was exchanged would be established to best suit the child’s needs.  It was common for siblings to maintain contact post-adoption.  ATV had introduced a therapeutic parenting programme and training for adoptive parents to help with recognising that an adopted child’s identity needs would evolve as they grew up.  Children often re-worked their identity around the teenage years and it was important to find different ways of discussing adoption with the child in age appropriate ways and this formed part of the Adoption Support offer.

 

·        It was also highlighted that ATV had commenced work with children and young people to look at how to train teachers to understand more about adoption and adopted children.  A researcher currently linked to ATV focussing on life-story work, was currently working with some adopted teenagers who helping to focus about the issues for adopted children and teenagers.  There was a concept that adopted children were ‘invisible’, yet they did have needs and history that often caused them great emotional turmoil as they were growing up.  It was important to help other people understand that adopted children needed to be given recognition and thought about more consciously across all universal services to recognise their needs.  A group had recently been established to look at life story work and issues in other areas of daily life that were important to raise awareness and improve support.

 

ATV working with Middlesbrough’s Children’s Services

 

It was recognised that Middlesbrough had experienced a difficult journey over the last few years and ATV had worked closely with Middlesbrough, particularly over the past six to 12 months, with a real drive through the Improvement Board to look at how permanency planning could be improved generally.

 

ATVs permanency champion was working closely with managers and the Permanence Monitoring Group focussing on children and their permanence plans to ensure that those with plans for adoption were progressed, and any issues resolved, in a timely way.  This had resulted in an increase in the numbers of children in Middlesbrough having their agency decision for adoption agreed and ultimately being placed with adoptive parents.

 

Timescales were currently very long for Middlesbrough children but this was reflective of children who had already been adopted and some of those children were considered ‘harder to place’.  For example, children over the age of 5 years (7 children placed in last 12 months), and larger sibling groups, but there had been real improvement.

 

Adoption Orders in Middlesbrough had increased by 30% compared with the same time period last year and the number of children actually placed for adoption had risen over the year and the children who had an agency decision for adoption demonstrated that Middlesbrough had made progress compared with the other authorities and this had been achieved within the context of Covid.

 

During discussion, the following issues were raised:-

 

·        In response to a query regarding kinship care, the Executive Director of Children’s Services clarified that with difference between a Connected Persons Foster Care placement, or ‘Kinship Care’ as it was sometimes known (the child remained looked after and parental responsibility was held by the local authority); and an adoptive placement (adopters had parental responsibility for the child).  Regardless of kinship carers predominantly being family members, the local authority held parental responsibility for the child.  It was acknowledged that there would be many cases where birth parents had made private arrangements with family members caring for a child but there had been no local authority involvement.  Where Children’s Services had become involved and made the placement with a family member, that was a kinship placement and it was acknowledged that this could be confusing.  This was one of the reasons that the local authority tried to achieve permanency through Special Guardianship arrangements as this gave the carers parental responsibility, with some PR being retained by the birth parent.  It was highlighted that the Agency Decision Maker should not make a decision for a child to be placed for adoption unless absolutely certain which was a massive responsibility.  The ADM needed to ensure that the Child Permanence Report was of sufficient quality that it could be understood by the child when they were older and also evidence that adoption was the only avenue available.  CPRs were returned where there was a possibility that a family member may be able to care for the child.  All avenues needed to be explored.  It was suggested that a briefing could be provided to a future meeting in relation to the different care pathways available.

 

·        A Panel Member queried the average time that children wait to be placed in an adoptive placement from the point that there plan for adoption was approved.  The Service Manager advised that timescales varied between different children and efforts to enhance the understanding of children coming through for adoption whilst also increasing the sufficiency of adopters were ongoing.  Having resources in place meant that children could be matched and placed much more quickly.  In Middlesbrough, the average timescale for children being placed for adoption, over the past year, from the point of entering the care system was 679 days. It was acknowledged that this figure included some children who had waited a very long time and also some children who were adopted by their foster carer following an extensive search for adopters prior to that.  One of the big challenges was around placing older children and sibling groups and recruitment of prospective adopters who were willing to take older children and sibling groups needed to be focussed on.  Overall in ATV, the timescales were reducing and some local authorities who had experienced big challenges in terms of the number of days children had waited, on average, were reducing.  Middlesbrough had 20 children placed for adoption but not yet adopted, therefore, from April 2021, Middlesbrough would have a high number of Adoption Orders being granted through Court.

 

·        There were very small numbers of children with extended waiting times and this resulted in average timescales looking much longer.  The ATV Service Manager worked closely with the Heads of Service for Looked after Children in each Local authority to ensure the right families were found for the children coming through for adoption.  It was essential to get the right match and the right support plan for families.

 

·        A Panel Member expressed concern around the length of time a child might wait to be adopted and the relationship with their foster carer, for example, the child may become attached to the carer and find it increasingly difficult to move on to a new home.  The Service Manager agreed and stated that sometimes, the child would go on to be adopted by their foster carer where this was the right plan for them.

 

·        It was queried where a child had lived in foster placement for a year but it was known that the child would be moved to an adoptive placement, how much time the child was given to get to know their adopters.  It was clarified that adoptive placements were not ‘tested out’ however, a robust introduction process took place and this included foster carers meeting the prospective adopters and getting to know each other as research showed that good relationships between the foster carers and adopters provided better outcomes for the child.  This also helped to maintain contact post adoption as moving on from a stable foster care placement could feel like a significant loss for a child and this needed to be built into the contact plan and adopters needed to be aware of this.

 

·        In response to a query regarding placing BAME children for adoption with BAME families, the Panel was informed that ATV tended to have to go to external placements for children from BAME communities in order to fulfil matching needs.  Sometimes white adopters were able to meet and promote the needs of BAME children.  This was a challenge nationally and RAAs needed to reach out to more BAME people to become adopters.  ATV currently had three BAME families in assessment.  This was a small proportion of prospective adopters and ATV was trying to promote and encourage recruitment of BAME adopters through national adoption week.  It was highlighted that in the Tees Valley region, the greatest proportion of children of BAME ethnicity were children with dual heritage – one white parent and one BAME parent – with no predominant ethnicity or religion.

 

The Chair thanked the Service Manager for her attendance and for the information provided.

 

AGREED that the information provided be noted and considered the context of the Panel’s current scrutiny review of Sufficiency and Permanency (Perceptions of Children in Care).